Review: OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD – quick and quiet Mac Pro storage!

28 Comments on Review: OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe SSD – quick and quiet Mac Pro storage!

1. First ever first comment, yes. Great video as always Jeff.

   • Congratulations!

   • @9to5Mac Hah, slightly sad of me but thank you buddy.

2. Always great videos

3. Love the video. Really informative

4. what a ripoff.

   • @9to5Mac Doesn’t mean its competitive with other options on the market and for something with the write speed limitations of this device it kind of is. I get better reads and writes on just 2 drives in raid 0. For that price you could do it all with pcie4.0 drives (yes i kno the board and cpu doesn’t support 4.0) i just agree there are better options on the market in this price range than this in my opinion as well.

   • @Brandon Crabtree The drive that he has is only 4tb not 8. Also reasonable 2tb drives are around 250.

   • MrYaxalot the way they sell the owc drives is 4 drives in varying capacity which is about $600ish and then the soft raid license is $180. Just depends on how you slice it. I hope they make empty card for cheap.

   • @Brandon Crabtree omg why is the raid license so much (not a mac guy at all) I just do it in my bios. Its not crazy priced it’s just the x8 pcie bottleneck is there and really hampers the speed.

   • MrYaxalot it wouldn’t be my first choice, but to make a long story short Apples Native soft RAID sucks and hasn’t had improvements in years so SoftRAID cornered the market.

5. I would and will be getting this one day. Especially when working on 4K RAW files. Thank you Jeff.

6. I have this on my MacPro. It is plug and play, makes zero noise of course, and is blazing fast. It just works

   And its faster than Apple SSD’s

7. Price set at 1.6k USD initially for 8TB but not sure why they increased to 2k.

   • Maybe because it’s super popular, or changes on the blades prices. if you are working with photography (800MB/s is more than enough) you can have. 14TB for a similar price. Combine a couple of this: https://www.amazon.com/Micron-MTFDDAK7T6QDE-7-68TB-2-5-Inch-Enterprise/dp/B07JQ2F2WG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=7.68TB+ssd&qid=1580176723&sr=8-1 with this https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HMUF2ZM/A/promise-pegasus-j2i-8tb-internal-storage-enclosure-for-mac-pro?fnode=69e2841765c0635bf92de3aeca21653da5e124b9470b4a215829b5a46600504f859b759788d18a8907aea08069cd0229a8be4e2f4fb52589ea1c1c07691d20bf29b24eef102c91348be4aaf2048d5b2f26ba9689edfd2cf51f6266fc2885f335 and Apple raid and be done with it.

   • @Jaime Duncan “Maybe because it’s super popular.” Yeah I think so too. At BnH, it’s priced at 1.8K USD.
     I’m currently working with 8K files so I really need the speed.

     I’m also interested with Micron 8TB (almost 8TB) for on the field back up but it looks like it’s quite slow.

     At BnH, preorder of Accelsior 4M2 PCI 3 just the enclosure for $250 is listed with no date of availability. According to macrumors forum, it’d be around March 2020.
     https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1522363-REG/owc_other_world_computing_owcssdacl4m20gb_accelsior_4m2_pcie_3_0.html

     Combine this with Sabrent Rocket 2TB x 4 = 8TB for $1,040

     Plus the Accelsior enclosure for $250
     Total of $1,290. Savings of around $700.

     Sabrent Rocket is also available for 4TB each blade for $800.

8. Does SoftRAID work with the T2 chip yet? It was causing me problems and I had to turn off security on boot because of it.

9. What’s the point of using SoftRAID if you’re going to only do RAID 0?

10. Hi thanks. Could you test the Pegasus J2i with a couple of SSDs it’s a good alternative for photographers that don’t need the super high-speed PCIe SSDs but want to work in silence? A couple of Micron 5210 can leat you to. 14TB. The other option for silent operation is a NAS. The iMac pro and the Mac Pro have. 10gbit ethernet, one can have a NAS far from the desk. (maybe even rack-mounted in a dedicated room) and get above 800MB/s sustained performance, enough for photo editing.

    • nice idea. I hope he sees this and tests it.
      you mean that instead of putting 2 HDDs into the cage, we put SSD instead, right?

11. OWC should remove the sticker from their NVME module to get better heat transfer

12. Great review, Jeff. That throttling is a bit concerning for large transfers or using as a VFX or media cache. Didn’t you remove the fans on your Amfeltec thus making it passively cooled as well (and with two more drives)? I wonder why that isn’t throttling whereas the enclosure designed to be passively cooled is…

13. Nice work with the M.2 video’s (Sonnet, Amfeltec and OWC). I watched them all, did my own research on all of them and they each have their own pros and cons. I work only with 4k 60FPS with lots of effects and a new Mac Pro 16-core, 160GB RAM, Pro Radeon Vega II card and 1 TB SSD. In your honest opinion which would you pick as your overall favorite for performance working with video footage in RAID 0 and upgradeability? Amfeltec pricier option with shipping, taxes etc. from Canada, Sonnet very limited options for NVME’s, OWC Accselsior strong overall and balanced between the two other options I mentioned. I am leaning toward Amfeltec but don’t like the challenge of warranty or return (costly even if defective). From one Mac Pro user to another which do you think takes the overall edge relative to the others? I don’t mind the noise from Amfeltec fans. Thanks for sharing your experience with all of them.

14. OWC is so awesome. Great products.

15. Amazon no envía este producto a España , alguien sabe donde puedo Adquirirlos , gracias

16. Did they have to make the PCB windows blue?

17. This is a beast of SSD

18. Mine is arriving today.